Those determined to miss the point might call "Sabotage" far-fetched, but there has never been anything "close-fetched" or "regular-fetched" about Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, in his late 60s, remains a pretty extreme character on screen.

Schwarzenegger is the defining reality here, so if the story of "Sabotage" makes little sense, it doesn't matter. Writer-director David Ayer, understood his job: to make an Arnold Schwarzenegger picture, with all the Arnold trappings. For example, it's a tradition that he plays men with very American-sounding names and that no character ever asks him why he talks like that. And so here his name is "John Wharton," and he's an officer with the Drug Enforcement Agency.

It is also necessary that he put on a pair of sunglasses, as in "Terminator"; and that he smoke big cigars, like the former governor of California. Personal references don't hurt, either, and so we see him working out in the gym, like the champion bodybuilder he once was, and telling someone off for having "48-percent body fat." Even if you didn't much enjoy the Arnold aura the first time around, there is a certain fun in the familiarity.

If there's a difference in "Sabotage," it's that this time Schwarzenegger plays a man with a scarred past: His wife and child were tortured and murdered by a drug cartel. Not that Schwarzenegger was ever one to get carried away by emotion: Here he watches a video of his wife getting sliced and diced as though gazing at a very disappointing sandwich.

As the film begins, John and his team of agents crash a drug dealer's party, kill everyone present and locate a pile of cash. Before the police arrive, they steal 10 million for themselves, which seems only fair. Some months later, John (Schwarzenegger) and his team take on another case and find members of their group getting picked off in increasingly elaborate and grotesque ways. So John and a local FBI agent (Olivia Williams) try to figure out who is doing the killing.

Later, you might want to sit back and replay the story in your head just to see where the pieces fit. Perhaps David Ayer, who co-wrote the script, knows. In any case, what's revealed by replaying the screenplay is not how flimsy the story is but how little that matters here.

In place of coherence, "Sabotage" mainly offers spectacle, not the spectacle of action or blood, though there's plenty of both, but the spectacle of characters in collision. It's Schwarzenegger and Olivia Williams in a dance, sometimes working together, sometimes clashing, pursuing their own interests, coming together and coming apart. The story and all the other elements are a frame for that interaction and for Schwarzenegger himself, who has somehow, over the years, become interesting.

Everything else you can throw out. "Sabotage" cannot be called a good movie, not with a straight face. But as an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, it has something.